Movies about disasters are mostly about the survivors. Holocaust movies are about people who escape the Nazis, and 9/11 movies are about people who flee the building or are discovered in the rubble. There are the demands of history and there are the dramatic demands of popular moviemaking, but sometimes those demands diverge so much that it becomes uncomfortable.

If one person survives and 6 million are killed, or one person gets out and 3,000 die, it's not really a happy ending — or even an adequate representation of the larger event. This is the challenge that "The Impossible" never quite overcomes, though it compensates with fine performances, chilling effects and director Juan Antonio Bayona's subtle sense of drama.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is presented through the true story of a family whose Thailand vacation was interrupted by the catastrophe. In real life, they were Spanish, as is the director, but their nationality is changed here to British, presumably because more international ticket-buyers speak English. Or maybe Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz were busy.

Bayona's skill is evident from the movie's first moments. Obviously, we know the tsunami is coming, and he knows that we know. But we don't know when, and so he teases us, particularly with his use of sound.

To underlie the dialogue, to underscore scenes of vacationers at the beach or lounging at poolside, he introduces dissonant notes, or just a subtle hum to suggest a discord between what they think is going on and what we know is about to happen.

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The tsunami arises with staggering suddenness. Within no more than 15 seconds, an unfamiliar noise is heard in the distance, becomes unignorable, then alarming, and then the ground shakes and everything is swept away. You might remember the tsunami scene in Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter." That was impressive, too, but it ended abruptly, when the protagonist lost consciousness. Here we follow Naomi Watts, as a wife and mother of three, and she stays conscious throughout, struggling to stay above the water, dodging objects, and calling out to her eldest son.

It's not just one wave. It's several, and so the perches that seem safe at first aren't. And when it's finally over, we hear the silence of devastation. All is transformed, and yet all is quiet, as if nature itself were saying, "Oh, did something happen?"

Obviously, "The Impossible" can't top this, though at this point it still has about 90 minutes left to go. Mom, who has a horrible leg injury, and her son (Tom Holland) are left alone in a soupy barrenness. She is brought to a triage center, where most of "The Impossible" takes place.

From here, the movie switches to the son (Mom is unconscious for half the movie), and Holland rises to the challenge. He has awe-inspiring scenes here that convey the boy's insolation, terror and innate dignity, the experience of getting thrown into manhood from the deep end of the pool.